


Out of Bounds

by ChipAndDealer



Series: Skipping Hogwarts [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aurors, Gen, Haven't quite decided if I should use an and or a slash for them, He should really pick one of those up it's very important for a main character to have, Pansy and Neville are something else, Police Procedural, Technically a prequel to Dead Run, Tonks and Finnigan are aurors, Whoops time traveling Harry doesn't have a license to kill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29190819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChipAndDealer/pseuds/ChipAndDealer
Summary: Harry Potter was listed in an official Auror file, always preceded by the word 'alias,' to distinguish the contents from a separate investigation Tonks privately considered not so separate after all. But then, she wasn't quite senior enough to make those decisions just yet. At least, 'senior' was one word for it; the other word for it was carved onto her arm when she was eight by an aunt with too many knives and too few morals.Tonks didn't use 'mudblood,' in casual conversation, though, so she usually said 'senior,' instead.
Relationships: Nymphadora Tonks & Seamus Finnigan, Pansy Parkinson & Neville Longbottom
Series: Skipping Hogwarts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2030644
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Out of Bounds

**Author's Note:**

> So, fun fact, I actually had an entirely different story 90% of the way written for this series, but it wasn't sitting right with me, so then I saw the Lupin show on Netflix and decided to throw out everything about the story I had except for, like, two ideas and write this instead. For the record, the Lupin show is top quality stuff, would highly recommend. Also, for the record, this is probably the closest thing I'll ever write to having Lupin connected with Tonks in any way.
> 
> Hah, ship burn, those are rare.

There was a man Nymphadora Tonks had never met, and he called himself Harry Potter. She couldn't invite him to any parties, or share a simple meal with him. They couldn't watch a quidditch game together or go out drinking, and if asked to describe his face, Tonks would have been unable to provide an answer. Yet at the same time, and as far from any official report as she could possibly make it, there were remarkably few people that she knew better than the man who called himself Harry Potter that she had never met.

Harry Potter was listed in an official Auror file, always preceded by the word 'alias,' to distinguish the contents from a separate investigation Tonks privately considered not so separate after all. But then, she wasn't quite senior enough to make those decisions just yet. At least, 'senior' was one word for it; the other word for it was carved onto her arm when she was eight by an aunt with too many knives and too few morals.

Tonks didn't use 'mudblood,' in casual conversation, though, so she usually said 'senior,' instead.

"Got another one for you, marm," Seamus Finnigan dropped a small file onto her desk which she opened to leaf through while he continued. "A drowning this time, Kroeber Gibbon. Charms put it at three days old, just washed up on the Thames."

Tonks raised an eyebrow. "Vic drowned to death three days ago, but just washed up now?"

"Sticking charm held him right on the bottom of the river," he grimaced. "Nasty business."

Tonks nodded, still scanning the report, though from the little information they had, she wasn't sure why. No next of kin, his wand snapped and placed in his pocket, and there was no way any magical signature would be traceable after three days underwater. She flipped the file closed. "Why's this coming to us?"

"Old Mad-Eye flagged it." A small smirk creeped up Seamus' face. "Said our good friend Gibbon here's a lot more recognizable when he's wearing a mask, if you get my meaning."

"A Death Eater?" She opened the folder again, scanning the pictures before setting it down. "Where's the Mark?"

"Some chatter creeps up every couple years about a guy in Knockturn Alley who can remove 'em." He shrugged. "Bound to come true eventually."

"Then Knockturn's our best bet." Tonks reached for the jacket draped across what was supposed to be the guest chair for interviewing members of the victim's family, but generally ended up being a collected mishmash of junk too inconvenient to put away or vanish. "Think this one's Potter's?" She asked, putting it on, her auror badge displayed proudly on the front.

"Alias Potter," Seamus corrected for what felt like the seventeen hundredth time. "You know the Chief has a bee in her bonnet about the whole thing."

Tonks rolled her eyes, hair involuntarily shifting to an exasperated yellow. "We both know who I was talking about."

Seamus wanted to argue more, but even with how friendly and laidback Tonks was, he didn't want to push his superior too far. Besides, he hadn't been in the Aurors nearly long enough to feel that comfortable. So instead, he grabbed her arm when she offered it, and she side-along apparated them to the mouth of Knockturn Alley.

"I used to think this place'd get less creepy when there were fewer Death Eaters around," Tonks muttered as the two began walking down the alley. "Now it just feels like the creepiness is concentrated."

"Right about now would probably be where Dumbledore says something about shadows being darker in the brightest of lights or some stuff like that," Seamus remarked and Tonks gave a rough chuckle in agreement.

When she was a child, Knockturn Alley was filled with what Tonks had considered the scariest witches and wizards she'd ever seen. Those scarred by dark magic, those who had sacrificed part of themselves for power, a piece of their body, their minds, or even their souls, they flooded the dark stain in Diagon like they couldn't bear to be out in the sun.

Her mother would take her down Knockturn from time to time, and Tonks would brush up against these criminals and horrors, even as they tried to get out of their way, some vestige of the Black family steel remaining in her mother, some respect from the villains despite her exile from the family. They were never harassed directly, but Tonks hated those visits nonetheless.

Then something happened, and even though when she began going off to Hogwarts, the visits never stopped, when she started training as an auror, the visits never stopped, suddenly her mother began shopping elsewhere. Potions ingredients her mother used to get a sharp discount from in Knockturn were suddenly purchased from behind the counter in Diagon Alley. Implements she used to buy from Borgin and Burkes for convenience or training were suddenly custom ordered and delivered to Gringotts for pickup, and she never even suggested Tonks go and pick something up for her there after that.

Tonks wasn't sure how her mother knew, she always seemed to know what had happened before an official Auror report could be filed, but when the news had landed on Tonks' desk, she could tell the reason her mother had stopped going into Knockturn Alley.

Someone had broken into Azkaban.

Azkaban Prison, for all its use in maintaining order, was something Tonks considered an almost exact reflection of Knockturn Alley. They were both relics from a bygone age, a box to scoop the undesirables of society into where they could be forgotten, where they could fester. A necessary evil that no decent folk could stand to be around, that's what Knockturn Alley was, and that's what Azkaban Prison was, as well. And while the news of a criminal breaking out of Azkaban would have been upsetting to many, Tonks would have guaranteed it wouldn't have slowed her mother's step into Knockturn Alley one bit. But no one had broken out of Azkaban; someone had broken in, and that fact shook her mother just as it shook every other person raised in a dark family, as it shook every visitor to Knockturn Alley.

'Ten Dead in Azkaban Prison,' the Daily Prophet read. Someone had deemed the necessary evil unnecessary, and that fact, that shaking of the old ways began making people nervous. As the facade of Azkaban's impenetrability cracked, Knockturn Alley, its mirror counterpart, no longer seemed so secure.

The Alley was no longer crowded. Tonks didn't have to bump shoulders with peddlers of poisons or witness any kind of illegal magical creature purchase, no. Any who still shopped in Knockturn Alley entered by floo, or scurried to and from shops like frightened mice, alone. And why? Alias Harry Potter.

They moved down the nearly empty alley, finally coming across a shop almost invisible, wedged between two others as it was. She rapped at the door no bigger than a closet's, with sharp authority.

"Who is it?" A muffled voice came from the other side, just as suspicious as any others left in the Alley, with his voice kept low to barely breach the door.

"This is Auror Tonks, I'm with Auror Finnigan on an investigation. If you'd open this door, we need to ask you a few questions." Usually at this point in the investigation, the questioning went one of two ways. He could open the door...

There was a mad scrambling noise from the other side that made Tonks sigh and Finnigan groan.

They never opened the door.

"Finnigan," Tonks called, and with a nod and a step back, he blasted the door open. Almost before the explosion was finished, she ran through the breach, already in pursuit.

He wouldn't apparate, she already knew. Apparations within Diagon Alley were tracked by a ward array. They listed the location, the name, and the time of every coming and going. Convenient for the Aurors, quite inconvenient for the criminals. Though, as Tonks tripped over an already fallen over stack of old Daily Prophets in the mold and dust ridden building, she wondered just how convenient it was, after all.

Still, that meant he'd either need to go for the floo, which Tonks being this close meant she'd be able to hear his destination, or try to leave the alley, which was why Finnigan was outside covering the exits. Why wasn't she covering the exits while Seamus got to trip around in the dark? Tonks was wondering that, herself, right about then.

"It's over," she called out, still chasing the sounds of footsteps she could hear on the bare wood. "We have the place surrounded." That was more or less a lie, but sometimes it worked.

All sounds of scrambling and footsteps that weren't her own stopped.

She wasn't expecting it to work this time.

"Sir?" She lit her wand with a lumos, carefully navigating the room, waiting for him to make another sound. The floor was warped by water damage and the creaks when she stepped on it filled the room far more effectively than any lighting charm, yet still the only sound she could hear in the house was her own.

"Hominem revelio." She felt her wand subtly dragged in one direction as the house shuddered under the pulse of light. She frowned, then cast the spell again.

For a moment, the revealing spell showed two others in the house instead of the one she was tracking. But the second person had disappeared almost before the first spell had completed, and the second showed only one. Creeping closer, Tonks had a sinking feeling why.

Sticking charms stuck him to the wall, with another pinning a letter to his chest. Around his head was a silencing charm Tonks dispelled with a wave of her wand.

After the string of foul language that erupted from his mouth, she wondered if that was a good idea. Still, too late to do anything about it if she wasn't going to resilence him, so she sent a signalling charm to Finnigan instead, that the suspect had been apprehended.

While she was doing that, she took the letter off his chest and opened it up, looking down at the familiar quill scrawl she'd already known would be within.

'Wotcher, Tonks,' the letter read. 'Heard about Gibbon being found, and without a Dark Mark no less. Intriguing. Well, in case you were wondering, he was on my list, but someone beat me to the punch this time, and if I had to guess by the sticking charm to the bottom of the Thames, someone who really didn't like him, either. My suggestion? Look into muggleborn students recently graduated from Hogwarts with a connection to Gibbon's Death Eater days. Drowning him in a muggle river definitely doesn't seem like an accident. Oh, I'll take care of our little de-tattoo artist friend when I find him, by the way, the guy this letter is stuck to isn't him, if you couldn't already guess. Taking away their Dark Marks won't slow me down, but I can't have Mad-Eye needing to flag every case just to get it to you, the man's got other stuff to do, like stopping dark wizards and keeping constant vigilance, you know, Mad-Eye stuff. Tell Seamus I said hi,' and of course it was signed, '-Harry Potter.'

Finnigan walked in at that moment, looking at the man stuck to the wall, then at the letter, his lips pursing. "Alias Potter?"

"He says 'hi,'" she answered, sardonically. Turning to the suspect again, temporarily out of breath thanks to his lambast of any gods he could think of, Tonks personally, the auror force in general, and finally Tonks' family and her mother's proclivity for loose affairs he never would have said had he actually knew who her mother was, Tonks dispelled the sticking charm and put him in a body bind before he hit the floor. "The guy who stuck you to the wall, don't happen to have a description of him, do you?"

"If I'd seen him, I'd sell him out in a heartbeat," he admitted, sourly. "But either the guy's got an invisibility cloak, or one heck of a disillusionment charm."

She believed invisibility cloak was currently leading in the Auror betting pool. "Worth a shot. There's a guy in the Alley who can remove Dark Marks, you tell him anything about it?"

"I don't know nothing." He spat on the floor, making Tonks' hair turn green in disgust.

"You'd better hope you know something." she levitated his frozen form up so she could look into his eyes. "Because if you don't tell us where he is, the guy we're really after is gonna kill him before you can say 'faulty wardstone.'"

Tonks had no formal training for her shapeshifting abilities. Beyond metamorphmagi being extremely rare, the nature of the magic, changing your face, your body, all without the aid of any outside charms or potions, lent itself far too well to anonymity. If she had met any other metamorphmagi, she wouldn't have known it.

As a result of this, her body tended to change on its own, her hair shifting with her mood, her legs growing longer when she ran, and her eyes changing in some way when she was interrogating a suspect.

She never found out exactly how it changed, but Finnigan had described it as 'unsettling,' so she'd imagine it wasn't very pleasant.

Even under the body bind, the man sagged, visibly. "Few days ago, couple'a youngbloods come into the Alley, buy out a storefront and set up shop there, potions business, you know. Stupid kids with too much money and not enough sense come in all the time, usually they fold out and go away before too long. But then I started hearing things..."

Still, she couldn't deny its effectiveness. "What things?" She considered shaking him for good measure, but held off for the moment. It seemed less like he didn't want to talk and more like he was trying to find the words.

"Things," he hedged. "I heard they took off a guy's Dark Mark, I heard they got a repellant sort of thing that can keep pixies off you for a good three-four hours, I heard they got a strain'a gillyweed that can keep you breathing underwater for twenty-four. It's the kinda stupid crazy potion things startups like these use to drum up business, which is why I didn't believe it, at first."

"At first?" Finnigan asked, but Tonks could already feel the timer before Potter got to the startup ticking quietly away.

"Rest of the story later," she cut off his answer. "Which storefront did they buy? Where are they?"

"Nine-twenty-eight, the door with the flower snake thing on it. They should be there," he answered, panicked slightly at the urgency in Tonks' tone.

"Finnigan." Seamus pressed an official Auror portkey with 'obstruction,' printed on it in bold block letters onto the man, teleporting him to a holding cell for the time being, and grabbing her arm, the two apparated to the end of Knockturn Alley, where building nine-two-eight, stood, wedged between a pie shop Tonks wouldn't have eaten at if her life depended on it, and a peculiar store for antique weapons that were almost definitely stolen.

She stepped up to the door, noting the bizarre painting of a snake eating a sunflower at the front, and knocked harshly on the surface. "Aurors. This is an emergency, your lives may be in danger. Open up."

A few moments later, the door opened to a particularly sour looking young woman, who looked at Tonks with distaste before meeting Seamus' eyes.

"Parkinson," he acknowledged with a similarly displeased expression.

"Finnigan," she nodded back. Stepping away from the door, she allowed them both to enter, even if it looked like that decision had taken some consideration. "What's this malarkey about my life being in danger?"

"Are you the one who removed the Dark Mark from a man named Kroeber Gibbon?" Tonks asked, point-blank.

"Yes," she answered, easily. "That was one of the jobs my associate and I took on, but seeing as it is not illegal to have a Dark Mark, it's not illegal to remove one either."

"And were you aware that Kroeber Gibbon was a wanted criminal?" Finnigan stepped forward, making Tonks sigh, inwardly. He was a good Auror, but when it came to people he'd known in school, he tended to let his greenness show.

"You know, shockingly, I don't think he brought that up during the operation," Parkinson said, flatly. After a moment's consideration, she added. "Was a wanted criminal? Past-tense?"

"Mister Gibbon was found dead this morning." Tonks began looking around the room they were in, at the surprisingly even lighting and comfortable chairs. She might have almost been convinced this was a Diagon Alley business if it weren't for the cold, Slytherin-like disposition of its owner.

"I'm guessing if it looked like an accident, you wouldn't be here." She sighed, turning and walking up three or four stairs onto a raised platform, almost like a stage, that held a kitchen area. "So you think whoever killed Gibbon is after us?"

"Actually, we believe you've attracted the attention of a third party, who's after you for removing the Dark Mark from Gibbon," Tonks explained, keeping her eyes on Parkinson as she looked into various cupboards, withdrawing one or two things and setting them down on the counter.

"Sounds ominous," she remarked, lightly. "You make it sound like I've attracted the attention of the Azkaban Reaper." She chuckled at the thought.

Tonks and Finnigan didn't laugh.

It took a moment or two, but when she noticed, her eyes widened, her former humor dying in her throat. She turned away, voice miserably flat. "I see."

Alias Potter wasn't the name the greater public knew him as.

She returned with a tray of drinks, laying it on the coffee table in the center of the room. "Well, my mother taught me to be courteous to people trying to save my life. Are you thirsty, officers?"

"No, thank you." Tonks said before Finnigan could even reach for a glass. "My mother taught me not to accept drinks from potions masters in Knockturn Alley."

Her lips curled into an amused smile. "I appreciate the vote of confidence." She picked up a glass and took a long, slow, sip. "But I'm no potions master. I handle the business end and customer relations, that's all. My associate takes care of the rest."

"And where is your associate?" Tonks asked.

The door clicked open and the two Aurors had their wands leveled at it before it could even swing all the way out.

"Pansy," the plain faced young man who opened the door said, looking between the two aurors as he slowly set down the bags of groceries he'd been bringing in. "Are we under arrest?"

"That is my associate," Parkinson elucidated, striding forward to pick up the bags and bring them up the stairs and into the back, apparently to put them away.

"You're not under arrest." Tonks lowered her wand and gestured at a chair while Finnigan went to close and lock the door once more. "We're here because we think your life may be in danger, and to ask you about a man named Kroeber Gibbon."

The man sat down in the proffered chair, expression quizzical. "You think Gibbon's going to come after us? Was there a problem with the procedure, I-"

"Gibbon's dead," Pansy called from the back. "They think the Azkaban Reaper's coming after us."

"What?" He nearly shouted in disbelief. "That's impossible, the Reaper only goes after Death Eaters, everyone knows that. Why would he... it doesn't make any sense."

"The person the Daily Prophet calls 'The Azkaban Reaper,' is known for killing Death Eaters, but there are a number of politician and civilian deaths that can be tied back to him as well." Tonks kept her grip tight on her wand. "As there has been a threat made against you, we'll have to take that seriously."

"What threat? Can I see it? This has to be a mistake." It was a fairly common request, that wasn't the issue. Wanting to know exactly what the threat was, saying it had to be a mistake, that it couldn't be happening, that was all fine, but there was something about his rejection of the idea that made suspicion curl in her skin.

"What makes you so sure it's a mistake?" Tonks challenged. "Serial killer goes after Death Eaters, you help a Death Eater, he goes after you, what's so hard to believe about that?"

He hesitated, visible enough that even Pansy took notice. "I'm also curious," she announced. "Because if I find out you know the Azkaban Reaper and we could have had business dealings with him all this time, I'm going to be very cross."

"I don't know the Azkaban Reaper," he said, exasperated. "But I did meet him. Once."

This had the firm attention of everyone in the room.

"That first time, that ten he killed in Azkaban, one of them..." he shook his head. "I just wanted to know why. So I owled a letter to the Daily Prophet, with a note to the Reaper, and they stuck it in somewhere in the back, small print, I'm shocked he even read it. But he did, and the next time I was in Diagon Alley, he found me."

"Which of the Azkaban prisoners had you so worked up?" Tonks asked. She didn't like profiling, but it wasn't hard to guess how two Slytherins with a Knockturn Alley business might be connected to captured Death Eaters. Family ties weren't always easy to escape.

He opened his mouth, but Finnigan was the one to answer. "Bellatrix Lestrange," he said. "I almost didn't recognize you, you're Neville Longbottom, aren't you?"

He gave a lopsided smile. "You got me. I'd heard you'd made it onto the Aurors, Seamus, congratulations. Sorry I didn't say it before."

"Thanks, but," Finnigan's eyebrows furrowed. "How did a red streak Gryff like you end up opening a Knockturn Alley business with a Slytherin?" He nodded at Parkinson. "No offense."

"Some taken," she replied, icily.

"Better question," Tonks interrupted once more. "Why don't you finish talking about meeting the Azkaban Reaper, someone no one has any kind of description or contact for in the known wizarding world?"

"There isn't much to talk about," Neville admitted, a bit exasperated. "I met him, he was under polyjuice, we talked about Bellatrix for a bit, and that was it. This was years ago, I was just a kid."

"What did he say about Bellatrix?" Tonks asked, though she already had a fair guess. Potter, Alias Potter, at least, never had fond things to say about Death Eaters in his letters.

"He... wasn't a fan," Neville confirmed. "But he said he was sorry he had to kill her. He said, if he didn't, she would have broken out in a few years along with the rest of them, and he couldn't let that happen."

"No one breaks out of Azkaban," Finnigan said.

"Just like no one breaks in?" Pansy snapped back. "If the Reaper told you they were going to break out, my money's on the Reaper. He would be the expert, after all."

Tonks cut in. "You said he was under polyjuice, who was he disguised as?"

A new voice broke in, dangerous, amused, and all too familiar. "It's funny you should ask." The figure walked into view, already inside the building, though when he got there, it was impossible to tell. "Wotcher, Tonks," he gave a little wave.

Alias Harry Potter, as there was no one else it could have been, and polyjuiced to wear a face she had seen in the mirror, more or less, for all her life.

Pansy was the closest to him, and faced so suddenly with the instrument of her mortality, she had her wand in a shaking grip leveled at the disguised Reaper before anyone else could move.

His gaze moved over to her in a lazy arc, no shift in posture, no muscle tensed by the change of energy in the room. "Pansy Parkinson and Neville Longbottom." He hummed, even as both the addressed suppressed a flinch that he already knew their names, even the one who had met him before. "That's..." he reached up slowly to scratch the back of his neck, "never happened before."

No one quite knew what to make of that.

"Could one of you explain to me why you were removing the Dark Mark from a Death Eater?" He asked, still utterly unconcerned by Pansy holding him at wandpoint.

"Proof of concept," Neville muttered, when he realized everyone in the room had their eyes on him, he repeated it a bit louder.

"Neville had a theory on a treatment for removing Servile Crests," Pansy elaborated.

Finnigan grimaced. "People smuggling."

Both Pansy and Neville nodded, their faces a match for Finnigan's, though hers was more controlled.

"We weren't sure if it would work, or any side effects there were, so we decided to test it out on a Death Eater, since the Dark Marks are a variation, we figured it'd get close enough," Neville continued. "Gibbon came in, we took off his Mark, reported him to the Aurors, and waited to hear back."

Tonks raised an eyebrow "You reported him to the Aurors?"

"Yeah." Neville's eyebrows furrowed. "Didn't Pansy tell you?"

"And risk sounding civil to an officer?" Pansy smirked. "I need to maintain some credibility to my Slytherin friends, Nev."

"But, if that's true, then why didn't we get the report on Gibbon?" Finnigan asked.

Alias Potter, apparently, had an answer to that. "Assuming they filed the report in the usual way, that's two days before it even gets read, another day to send it to the right department, from a day to a week before anyone in that department can read it, and the wheels of bureaucracy keep on turning."

Tonks rarely had a truly cynical tone; to hear one coming so easily from her voice was unsettling to say the least.

"Are you going to curse me, Miss Parkinson?" Alias Potter asked.

"What are the odds I'd hit you?" She bit back, wand still leveled at him.

He seemed to consider it for a moment or two. "Not as good as you might like."

She nodded, almost imperceptibly, but she didn't lower her wand. "Are you here to kill us, Reaper?"

He seemed to consider this question, too.

Tonks and Finnigan had their wands in their hands, not pointed up at him, not obvious, but as soon as the conversation turned, they were ready.

"Why Neville?" He asked.

Her face was hardened as stone. "Because without me, the world would have swallowed Neville whole and spat him back out, and without Neville, I would have let it."

He nodded, the slightest of smiles coating his stolen face. "I understand, and to answer your question, no, I'm not here to kill you."

There was a silent sigh as each of the other residents of the room relaxed a small amount.

He clapped his hands together. "Well, if that's all for today, I'd best be off."

As Pansy's wand lowered, two more rose up to point directly at the polyjuiced fugitive. "Alias Azkaban Reaper, you are under arrest by authority of the Minister of Magic and the Auror force under suspicion of murder. Surrender your wand and allow us to take you into custody. Don't make any sudden movements or we will be forced to curse you," Tonks recited the standard lecture, scowling at her mirror double, a stunner already glowing on the tip of her wand.

"You know, Tonks, when this is all over, we're probably gonna think back to this and laugh," he responded, once again unperturbed by being threatened at wandpoint. "Tell Moody I said hi, okay?"

And before anyone could respond, before Tonks could release the stunner she had been storing, the Reaper with the stolen face disappeared.

There was no crack of apparation, no flare of phoenix fire, no golden dust of a time turner. One moment he was standing there, real, dangerous, and the next... nothing.

Tonks growled, leaping up the stairs and coating the area in every detection charm she could think of, to no avail. True to her eyes, he hadn't apparated, hadn't traveled by phoenix, hadn't used a time turner. He wasn't an illusion, but he wasn't there, either, or if he was, he'd managed to find a way to avoid her detection.

This was the man who had broken into Azkaban.

And he'd slipped right through her fingers.

Tonks went through the motions, telling Parkinson and Longbottom where to contact them if they had any information, walked out into Knockturn, and with Seamus's hand on her arm, apparated away again, back to the office, a murder case that still needed to be solved, and an absolute metric ton of paperwork.

It was a while before either of them spoke again. Neither were overly used to the sting of a suspect escaping them, and the fact he'd done it without even drawing a wand, and in a way they still couldn't guess, was a gutting blow to their pride.

Finally, Seamus put the last dot on the latest piece of paperwork and pushed it away. "Do you ever feel like we might be wrong?" He asked.

"Wrong about what?" Tonks kept scratching away at her own report.

He shrugged, the sound of the action making it clear even when she didn't turn around. "About Harry Potter."

Her quill stopped. "Alias Harry Potter?"

"We both know who I'm talking about," he said, a touch of humor in his voice.

Tonks turned around fully. "What about him?"

He sighed, running a frustrated hand through his hair as he tried to figure out how to phrase what he wanted to say. "I mean, he kills Death Eaters. He goes after murderers, and thugs, and politicians so corrupt I'm shocked the Ministry managed to survive this long." He sagged under an invisible weight, fingers clenching into fists he could only stare down at. "How do you do it? Because I know I took an oath, but what am I supposed to do, when half the time I think of him, I want to catch him, and the other half, I want to shake his bloody hand?"

"I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about it," Tonks admitted, wanly. "Do you know how easy it would be if we could just ignore him? The letters, the killings, the paperwork because we could just start signing off murdered Death Eaters by saying he did it? The time we'd save, alone, is incredible. It's tempting, for a while, then I think about Bellatrix."

Seamus gave a double take. "Bellatrix Lestrange?"

"Before her marriage, it was Bellatrix Black. She was my aunt, you know, before she died."

"Oh," he looked away. "I'm sorry."

Tonks laughed, softly. "Don't be. I've worked as an Auror for years, and I haven't met a single person more reprehensible, sadistic, or flat out evil as she is. No. When I heard someone had broken into Azkaban and finally killed her, the only thing I felt was relief."

His eyebrows furrowed. "Then why...?"

"Because that's the point." She shrugged. "He kills someone we hate, today. He kills someone we love, tomorrow. What's the difference? And if we decide to let it slide today, if we think he's only doing a public service, then the one who dies tomorrow is on us. Good, bad, light, dark, living, dead, everyone deserves justice. He thinks he can give it by killing in an alley. We have to give it by bringing him in."

"That thing you do with your eyes is right creepy, yeah?" He remarked, breaking the tension as they both laughed and returned to their paperwork.

A few minutes passed, where the only sound was the scratching of quill against parchment, reliving a scene of scribes some bygone time ago, before Seamus spoke again. "Hey, Tonks?"

She didn't turn around, still working on her current report. "Yeah, Finnigan?"

"Thanks." The grateful smile could be heard in his voice.

She smiled back, a private grin between the two that neither of them saw. "No problem."

There was a man Nymphadora Tonks had met only once, and he called himself Harry Potter. He had experience in combat, his demeanor and calm in a threatening situation spoke to that. He was almost certainly a former Auror, the references to Moody's signature phrase, his knowledge of the bureaucracy in internal Auror affairs, and the way he could take out so many Death Eaters spoke to an advanced level of training in dark wizard hunting. And his warped morality and tonally discordant letters suggested some kind of troubled youth: an abusive family, a traumatic event, or even some remnants of the previous war, stealing his childhood away from him. She had met him only once, yet there were remarkably few people she knew better, and even though she had felt glad when he killed Bellatrix Lestrange, even though she no longer needed to push through horrors on trips down Knockturn Alley, even though she couldn't honestly say she cared much for a single one of his victims, it didn't matter.

She'd catch him anyway.

That's what the Auror force did, after all: they caught dark wizards.


End file.
